Your January 2018 Search Engine Bytes Digest by Kristi Hagen

What's the best way to use Google Brand & Google My Business in a franchise situation?

I have been setting up Google Brand pages for a national client that sells home-based franchise opportunities in services like house painting, window tinting, elderly assistance, pet care and so on.

My client recently hired a new person who wants to set up a Google My Business(GMB) account for each brand name under the umbrella of the company that actually owns/sells the franchises. Each of the franchise opportunities is offered nationally and originates from the same headquarters location.

What are your thoughts about the proper way to do this?

Answer:

As these are home-based, service area businesses, the parent company cannot create and verify listings in bulk. However, you can have each location go through the current verification process individually in order to gain a verified Google My Business listing.

Either the parent company or the location can "own" the listing and permissions can be used so that the location and the parent company can both make changes and updates.

It may also be possible for the business to verify and manage all of the locations via the Google My Business API.

Another alternative is to use Yext or another service that is already connected to Google My Business via the API. While this costs money, so does the API; and the more locations you have, the cheaper it is per location.

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